Demons are dancing around me
by skyfallat221b
Summary: After New York, Clint decides to isolate himself from the rest of the team. For days, he doesn't come out of his room, until Natasha decides to check up on him... (tw self harm) deaf!clint.


**Word count:** _659 words.  
_**Characters:** _Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff, Nick Fury, and a SHIELD doctor.  
_**Trigger warnings:** _blood, self harm._

_Little ficlet. I'm too lazy to finish it, and I don't want to go further, but yeah, you get the gist. unbeta'd._

* * *

When they'd all been sent on their way, Clint hadn't had any other reaction than going to his room.

Loki had been taken to Asgard, Thor had gone with him, Tony and Pepper were rebuilding the tower, Steve went in with Hill and Fury, Banner disappeared from the surface of the earth again, and Natasha went to debrief for a couple of days. And, to the medical wing to get her ankle fixed.

The archer, on the other hand, stayed in his room. For hours. Days. Refusing to acknowledge the outside world, he turned off his hearing aids and locked himself into his dark room.

All around him, he felt the demons come. Slowly, they crept down from the ceiling, they appeared in a dim blueish glow from beneath the bed, they whispered words and orders to his mind.

Dancing all around him, he could feel their laughs and their snickering. But more than anything, he could feel their razor sharp claws, softly stroking his skin, as they laughed in harmony.

He could hear them. How could he ?

Dimming the lights, he felt the life drain out of him. He could feel it drip out of him, drop after drop, as every single last demon, every single last blue grin of the trickster god pushed him to the edge.

Nobody asked.

Nobody came.

Not for the first couple of days. He could feel the sharpness of their teeth, of their claws, and he could feel the hurt coming from deep within his chest. Heaving, sweating, crying, Clint tried to get them out, as he pulled the covers over his head, hoping to shut them up.

He had the blinds closed, but he knew the day had come and gone, for his internal clock was begging for sleep.

But he couldn't.

Somehow, the bed wouldn't let him sleep, and he could feel a wet liquid all over him, as he lay down on the covers and the pillow, hiding his face behind his hands.

When a soft knock on the door came, he didn't hear. He hadn't heard anything for days. Except the deafening silence of monsters roaming in the darkness of his room, hiding behind every corner, every piece of furniture.

When the door was opened, he didn't hear. He didn't expect anybody to come fetch him, not this fast. All he wanted was to simple stay in his bed, and hope for sleep to come. But sleep eluded him, as if it had been revoked by some all seeing eye.

When the light switched on, he looked around him, blinded by the sudden irruption in his room. The only color he could see, was red. Red, all around him, blurring every single line, soaking every single fabric, dripping off his fingers, cracked on his body.

* * *

"We didn't know," Natasha told the doctors, as she watched the chart on the desk before her. Fury was sitting by her side, his silence screaming at the interrogative tone of the doctors.

"You didn't know that Clint had relapsed?" the doctor repeated, pushing the chart open, showing some pictures of Clint's mutilated arms. "He used three different blades to slash his arms open, and bled out for days in his room, and you never thought you should check up on him?"

Natasha stayed silent. She'd been in the hospital wing herself and tried to phone Clint over a hundred times, but his phone had rung, and rung, until it ended up directing her to voicemail. Probably the moment the phone's battery had died. Fury bent forward, and watched the doctor with his one eye.

"Will he survive?" he asked, and the doctor sighed, nodding.

"Yes, he will. But he'll have those scars for the rest of his life."

Natasha closed her wrists. Clint had been whispering something about demons with razor sharp claws when they carried him from the room to the hospital wing. Damn it.

* * *

**Yeah, Clint post-Avengers is my favourite thing in the world because I can pour all of my issues into his character. So yeah. Sorry.**


End file.
